Oscillation in the initial segment complexity of random reals

We study oscillation in the prefix-free complexity of initial segments of 1-random reals. For upward oscillations, we prove that _∑n∈ω²−g(n) diverges iff (^∃∞n)K(X?n)>n+g(n) for every 1-random X∈ω². For downward oscillations, we characterize the functions g such that (^∃∞n)K(X?n)<n+g(n) for almost every X∈ω². The proof of this result uses an improvement of Chaitin's counting theorem—we give a tight upper bound on the number of strings σ∈n² such that K(σ)<n+K(n)−m.The work on upward oscillations has applications to the K-degrees. Write XK_?Y to mean that K(X?n)?K(Y?n)+O(1). The induced structure is called the K-degrees. We prove that there are comparable () 1-random K-degrees. We also prove that every lower cone and some upper cones in the 1-random K-degrees have size continuum.Finally, we show that it is independent of ZFC, even assuming that the Continuum Hypothesis fails, whether all chains of 1-random K-degrees of size less than ℵ₀² have a lower bound in the 1-random K-degrees.